Serbia’s Minister: We'll arrest Kosovo PM if he comes here

TANJUG/Dragan Kujundžić

Nebojsa Stefanovic, Serbia’s Interior Minister said on Friday police would arrest Kosovo PM if he came to the country’s southern Presevo valley.

Stefanovic said that Serbia’s warrant for the arrest of Ramush Haradinaj was active and thus his arrest would be imminent.

Presevo valley is a region with the town of the same name in Serbia’s south, mostly populated by ethnic Albanians whose local authorities have invited Haradinaj for a visit.

He said he would come both to Presevo and Medvedja, a town in the area which has a Serb majority, without hiding and with Serbia’s permission.

“The warrant is active and he will surely be arrested as soon as he becomes available to police,” Stefanovic told a Belgrade Kurir daily.

Serbia accused Haradinaj of war crimes during the armed conflict in Kosovo in 1998-1999.

France arrested him on an Interpol warrant but an appeal court refused to extradite him to Serbia.

Haradinaj and Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci are both wanted by Serbia’s authorities, but their names are no longer visible on the Interpol website, which means that there are no apparent red warrants for the two and that they won’t be arrested in other countries.

Haradinaj was tried twice before The Hague Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia and was declared innocent in 2008, while in 2012 he was acquitted of all charges.

Stefanovic said that the Interpol warrants for Haradinaj and Thaci were still in the Interpol database, but not visible.

Thaci was supposed to come to Belgrade three years ago, but after Interior Ministry announced his arrest he cancelled the trip.